Student organizations are an essential part of the college experience. It’s a way for students to meet others with similar interests. But what happens when there is not a group for what you enjoy? Simple, you start your own student org.
At Wichita State University, it takes more than getting some people together and advertising your group around campus. You have to go through a process that makes your club an official WSU Registered Student Organization (RSO). And it’s not as easy as you might think it is.
Going into making your club, you have to file the appropriate paperwork with Student Engagement & Belonging (SEB).
To do this, you group must fulfill a few requirements:
- Five or more student members with a president and treasurer
- A faculty or staff member to serve as the adviser
- Governing documents including a constitution and bylaws
That’s just when filing for your organization to be considered. The paperwork alone makes it stressful for full students to want to create their school student organization, let alone do it.
Outside of creating your own constitution and bylaws, students must also follow the WSU Code of Conduct to make sure their rules don’t clash with WSU rules.
Getting the organization officially recognized
After getting the paperwork approved, students still have to meet with SEB and the Student Government Association to make sure your organization aligns with the policies. This is a process that can take up to weeks or even more.
After going through that unnecessarily long process, you still have to go out and advertise your organization so you get the two most important things for a student organization: funding and members.
These two things are the hardest part of making a student organization. The process of trying to get members and finding a way to advertise without funding can be stressful for students that just want to start something and meet people with overlapping interests. WSU needs to implement a better system when it comes to funding student organizations without having to climb mountains.
Let’s say you went through every step to create an organization and now you have funding, you’re ready to start your club, but it’s been weeks or even months since you started setting up your organization. Now, other students are settled into campus life and might be less interested in joining a new group.
So why does WSU require so many steps to create a student organization? Set aside the obvious of making sure the groups are appropriate and organized, there are two different organizations to get through before the decision of getting approved or being turned down. Then you have to get funding to even start legitimately advertising your club. What’s the point of all these extra steps just for someone to make an organization that might not last a few months?
Going through all of the requirements can be discouraging for students who just want to make new friends through common interests and hobbies, especially when students have enough stressors occurring in their day-to-day life. The process is overwhelming. This takes away what a student organization is supposed to represent — a way for students to express themselves through what they enjoy.
Wichita State should create a shorter process for students who legitimately want to start an organization, but the whole process is dispiriting.
